


The Gas

by Cassplay



Category: StarCraft (Video Games)
Genre: Anger, Gen, Implied former Kerrigan/Raynor, Intrusive Thoughts, Memory Loss, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, post Wings of Liberty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 10:24:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16093742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassplay/pseuds/Cassplay
Summary: Kerrigan wakes after the events of Wings of Liberty, Memories a blur, with nothing to remind her of the missing chunk of her life except the strange spines growing out of her head.





	The Gas

**Author's Note:**

> First off, this needs a major warning for Everything in the tags. if there's anything I missed I'm very sorry, please message me and I can add it.
> 
> Secondly, this was a nice bit of catharsis for me, but it is the first story I'm uploading to AO3, so I would appreciate the feedback.

She was alone.

Panic gripped her. Where was the Swarm?

Kerrigan’s eyes flew open. The light burned her eyes, she growled and shut them. She held up a hand and squinted out at the room. Her eyes adjusted slowly, revealing a fairly large room. It was nothing like the luxury rooms she was usually afforded in her work as a not insignificant figure in the Sons of Korhal. It was more than sparse, the raised platform she woke up on was the only furniture. From where Kerrigan was lying it looked like the walls of the spherical room were made of metal. She stared around, seeing a door, it looked more like a vault door than anything else.

She snapped into action, leaping towards the door. she brought her hand up to thrust it between the door and the wall, she stopped herself just in time. That sort of thing would most likely break her hand.

Her eyes moved to her hand, and for some reason, the skin upon it felt alien to her. But why would that be?

She looked back around the room. It was obviously Terran. The locked door meant she was a prisoner. But of whom? It wasn’t the Sons of Korhal, Arcturus wouldn’t want one of his best assets locked up. The Confederacy was gone. The room was too clean for bandits or mercenaries. She searched her mind for anyone that might have access to this sort of tech and have a grudge against her.

Tentatively, she reached out with her psionics.

This was a mistake, an alarm blared. Gas began to flood the room, the different density causing ripples in the air around her. She whirled around, her hair whipping her face, and she passed out.

 

She was alone.

Kerrigan sat up. Tarsonis, she had been on Tarsonis. Saving the lives of fellow Terrans from a Protoss fleet. There was more. She remembered her orders from Arcturus. She was to protect the Zerg Hive on Tarsonis. But why?

She knew why she had been sent to fight against the invading Protoss, they would have burned the planet, and it’s Terran population, to glass to rid it of the Zerg. Her head bobbed slightly as the memories came back to her slowly. The Protoss fleet was attacking the Hive first.

The memories dimmed.

Kerrigan clutched her head in frustration and growled.

She could remember the battlefield, the flicker of Protoss camouflage which looked similar to the gas that had knocked her out, and the Z-

Her head pounded.

She tried to breathe steadier. It didn’t work much.

She strained her mind back to the battlefield. But the further she seemed to delve into the fray the more her head ached. She stopped trying to think of the battle, and the pain receded somewhat.

She laid back onto the slab, the lights shone down at her. They were still to bright, she brought her hand above her between her and the lights, trying to block the harshest of the glare out.

Flying. Leathery wings. Stingers curled downwards.

She saw the Mutalisks above her, spiralling, waiting for her to succumb to the onslaught of the Swarm.

Her head pounded hard. She screamed in pain.

Thinking only to be rid of it, she started hitting her head upon the slab, crying out with every hit that did not stop the pain, or her.

She welcomed the gas this time.

 

She was alone.

Whoever was holding her hadn’t moved her like last time. But it seemed someone must have entered and deposited something on her head. Long, thick, things obscured her vision. She reached her hand up to remove whatever strange thing it was.

Her fingers entered the forest of tendrils. They were rather stiff, and were at the same time stiff but yielding. She closed her fingers around a bunch of them and pulled.

Pain shot through her head once again. This frightened her even more than her previous waking minutes, because this was no headache, these things were pulling at her scalp, as if they were attached to her.

She sat up again, the tendrils stayed attached to her. They were quite long, she brought them in front of her face. They were brown, not at all like her hair of red. Her hands roamed through the tendrils and felt them. A shudder ran through her, they seemed to have burrowed into her scalp, or perhaps even more frightening, was being extruded by it.

She ran her fingers through the many tendrils, but there seemed to be none of her hair inside the mass.

“What is this?” she asked no one.

But she knew what this was, it was Zerg. The texture, the vaguely insectoid appearance, and the colouration all brought to mind the Swarm.

She couldn’t have been infested, she was in her right mind now, and she and her fellow Terrans could not come back from that fate.

Then what had happened to her?

She felt a twitch, far away and through many layers of metal, but it was something. She extended her mind before remembering what had happened last time.

The Gas was there again.

 

She was not alone.

She was surrounded by the Zerg, they were a flurry of activity around her. The cocoon in which she lay the only thing separating her from them.

She couldn’t see them, she had her eyes closed. She wasn’t even awake, really.

But she knew they were there.

She could feel something, was it a tingling? No, it was far too painful to be described like that. It was like she was being undone, digested, changed.

She felt another presence, a much larger and more important presence than any individual Zerg around her. A great eye. It looked upon her with pride.

Kerrigan sat up. She was still in the cell. But there was someone with her.

“Howdy Darlin’,” He said in that annoying accent of his. And as annoying as it might be sometimes, over the years she remembered growing to enjoy it. “How ya holdin’ up?”

She wanted to kill him. Her every instinct cried out that he must perish. She didn’t understand why, this was Jim, why would she want to hurt him?

“Jim.” She whispered. They embraced. The urges to tear the life from his body returned, greater than before. She couldn’t resist them this time, her hand reached towards where he holstered his sidearm. The large pistol a simple but effective weapon to snuff the life out of him.

But it wasn’t there. She realised what she had tried to do, and loathing came over her. She pulled from his arms and crashed herself back onto the slab. Why? Why had she tried to do that? Her hands gripped at the spines in place of her hair.

Jim had noticed her going for where the gun would have been, of course. He put a gentle hand onto her shoulder. Not speaking, only trying to comfort.

As good as his intentions were, this only sent more shockwaves through her. Hating herself, she began to pull angrily at the tendrils on her head, trying to tear them out of her. She heard Jim shout something, and then something else, but she was too intent on herself suffering for the wrong thoughts.

She hated the gas.

 

She was alone again.

She didn’t dream anything specific this time, it was all a blur.

Blood, viscera, hundreds of worlds slaughtered at her command.

And out of the blur came her name.

She had been shackled. That didn’t make her feel any better.

She felt anger rise up in her, anger at Jim for keeping her alive, at whoever was foolish enough to allow the Queen of Blades to continue, and anger at herself.

Her arms were held out by the shackles, various diagnostic tools along the arms lighting up and whirring as they did what they were told. Her head raised to see a viewscreen.

“I’m sorry, Sarah.” Jim said.

“Why am I here?” she said, her voice wavering as she tried to keep from shouting that they should euthanise her right that moment.

“I got you back.” He said, thinking he knew what she meant. “We rolled right over the Zerg Swarm and saved you from whatever the Overmind did to you.”

The eye, the Overmind.

“You’re a fool, Jim Raynor.” She spat. “You could have ridden the galaxy of the Queen of Blades, like you vowed, but you didn’t. You let that second head of yours think for you.”

“Sarah, I don’t-“ He said. “This isn’t about us, this is about you.” His face lowered. “Where did you hear that name?”

“I heard it when I said it.” She said, her mouth twisting into a grin. If she could keep this up, then perhaps… “My memories are returning, Jim Raynor.”

“You’re not her anymore!” He said. “The obelisk purged you of your zerg half.”

“Evidence to the contrary is before your very eyes, Jim Raynor.”

“Sarah.” He softened. “The Queen of Blades never spoke like that, I know what you’re trying to do; What you’re trying to make me do.”

“No.” Sarah whispered. Her face screwed up in anger. “if I can’t make you want to kill me, I’ll force you.” She felt the shackles around her arms, and she strained against them. They broke so easily.

The gas began to flood the room.

But she continued.

She had changed, evolved.

If Jim was here, they had guns.

She felt the psionic power well up within her. The vault door crumpled off it’s hinges and blasted out into the room beyond.

She walked forwards and out of her cell.

 

“We can’t, that’s exactly what she wants.” Jim shouted at Valerian.

“Maybe so, but she is currently a danger to every single person on this facility.” Valerian remained cool. “And if her death prevents a single more civilian casualty I will pull the trigger myself.”

“Argh.” He knew Valerian was right. He hated him for it, but he knew he was right.

“That being said, if there is any way to curb her violent tendencies so that my people can gather more data, I may be open to it.” He opened up a comms channel. “Sargent, are you in position?”

“Locked and loaded, General.” A gruff Scottish voice said. “We’ll stop her.”

“But until then, James; I will proceed with eliminating her.”

“What are tanks going to do against her?” Jim asked, not sure even their best could destroy Sarah in this state. He growled and clutched his head. “Listen, we can’t stop her, that’s how she nearly destroyed us on Char; we need to find some way of redirecting that anger.”

Valerian stopped for a second. Then reopened the comms channel.

“Sargent, stand down.” He said.

“Aw man.”

“That’s an order.” He flipped off the channel again. Then turned to look at Jim. “I’m giving you one chance, James. Now what do we get her to hate more than someone who is responsible for the deaths of billions of her own people?”

 

Kerrigan strode through the facility, clenching pipes and various other systems with her psionics, anything for someone to notice and try to put her down.

She deserved it.

She grasped at a pipe. Water rushed out of it, partly flooding the corridor. The flow settled down somewhat, and a naked man came flying out of a door. Evidently that was a flow pipe to a block of showers.

He saw the her standing above him, and he scrambled away. He was pathetic, writhing in the wet corridor, naked.

She advanced on him, it would be so easy for her to put him out of his misery. That would show Jim that she was better off dead.

She raised an arm, ready to bring it down in a slashing motion, ready to kill.

 

“Sarah” Jim shouted to her as she walked along an empty corridor. “Listen! You need to know the truth.”

She turned, her eyes glowing with the light of her psionic powers. She raised her hand, Jim felt a tug behind his back, and he was rushing through the air towards her. He stopped, hovering in front of her. He was silent, waiting for her to speak.

“Well?” she said after a long moment of silence.

 

She was alone.

A new name burnt within her.

The name of the man who betrayed her, left her to become the Queen of Blades.

The name of the man who had betrayed his rebellion, had become what it had sought to destroy.

The name of the man who kept power through the fear of her Swarm, sending battalion after battalion out in his name.

The name of Arcturus Mengsk.

His death would be unlike anything the Queen of Blades had exacted upon her victims.


End file.
